Institute of Museum and Library Services: Accelerating Promising Practices for Small Libraries

Deadline: February 25, 2019

The Accelerating Promising Practices for Small Libraries (APP) program will support projects that strengthen the ability of small and rural libraries and archives to serve their communities. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites applications that focus on transforming school library practice, community memory, or digital inclusion and are clearly linked to an individual institution’s broader community needs.

The project categories are:

Transforming School Library Practice

Community Memory

Digital Inclusion

Each award under this initiative will support one of the following three goals of the IMLS strategic plan, Transforming Communities:

Promote Lifelong Learning: IMLS supports learning and literacy for people of all ages through museums and libraries

Build Capacity: IMLS strengthens the capacity of museums and libraries to improve the wellbeing of their communities

Increase Public Access: IMLS makes strategic investments that increase access to information, ideas, and networks through libraries and museums

Amount: Approximately $1,200,000 is available to make up to 25 awards ranging from $10,000–$50,000.

Eligibility: Applicants must:

Be either a unit of state or local government or be a private, nonprofit institution that has nonprofit status under the Internal Revenue Code, and

Be located in one of the 50 States of the United States of America, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, or the Republic of Palau

In addition, applicants must be one of the following six types of organizations:

A library or a parent organization, such as a school district, a municipality, a state agency, or an academic institution, that is responsible for the administration of a library

An academic or administrative unit, such as a graduate school of library and information science that is part of an institution of higher education through which it would make an application

A digital library, if it makes library materials publicly available and provides library services, including selection, organization, description, reference, and preservation, under the supervision of at least one permanent professional staff librarian

A library agency that is an official agency of a state or other unit of government and is charged by the law governing it with the extension and development of public library services within its jurisdiction

A library consortium that is a local, statewide, regional, interstate, or international cooperative association of library entities that provides for the systematic and effective coordination of the resources of eligible libraries, and information centers that work to improve the services delivered to the clientele of these libraries

A library association or library organization that exists on a permanent basis; serves libraries or library professionals on a national, regional, state, or local level; and engages in activities designed to advance the well-being of libraries and the library profession